The concept of the “museum of civilisation” still remains a subject of debate: from its disciplinary heritage to its subsequent evolutions, its definition and future challenges, it questions the museal field while at the same time shaking up its structure. These decidedly current issues are at the heart of the work entitled: The museum of civilisation, from the exhibition of folklore to contemporary issues (1). Written by the museologist Noémie Drouguet, this work can be seen as a synthesis of this rich set of museal forms.

For several decades, the term “museum of civilisation” has been a common theme in publications on the subject of museology. Whether called into question or vigorously defended, the meaning of the term changes from one author to another and can have many interpretations - a museal whole whose boundaries are blurred, a contrasting evolution involving so-called “classical” institutions or even a super-category encompassing all museums that deal with society. And while these attempts at definition have haunted museal institutions themselves, the literature on the question remains fragmented, confining itself to a few isolated chapters or conference proceedings. By filling the resultant void that exists in the scientific literature, this work by Noémie Drouguet, a researcher in the museology department of the University of Liege, offers a synthesis which attempts to address the idea of the museum of civilisation from different vantage points. On turning the pages of this work, the reader discovers the disciplinary heritage and history of museums of society — the descendants of regional ethnographic museums —, explores the different museal forms grouped under this banner and is given food for thought with regard to the objectives and future of these institutions within our multicultural society.

Between folklore and ethnology

In order to sketch the current contours of museums of society, Noémie Drouguet returns to their disciplinary filiations in the first chapter of her work: the descendants of museums of ethnography, anthropology or even arts and popular traditions, they are also linked to the evolution of a particular discipline, that of ethnology. While this discipline did not really enjoy autonomy until the second half of the 19th century, it was the legacy of those pioneers, who, during the previous century, took an interest in “other” cultures. At first, under the exotic spell of distant countries, this fledgling ethnology rapidly evolves in Europe, crystallising the growing curiosity of the cultured elite with regard to the lifestyles of the working classes. Far from being disinterested, the first field studies of any import in the area were often tainted by political (or even moralistic) ambitions. The survey carried out by the Abbé Grégoire on the dialects and customs of the countryside which was conducted between 1790 and 1794 is a testament to this fact: his survey fed into the tradition of the French Revolution and its objective of bestowing a single language on France while supplanting the older dialects. The dawn of the 19^th century was marked by a historical rupture: in a society that was in the grip of industrial revolution, whose ways of life were transformed, gathering witnesses to a culture that was presented as drawing to an end was an unavoidable necessity.

It was in this context of profound social evolution that the term “folklore” appeared: while the term may have a somewhat negative connotation today, it refers to “the study of the traditions, customs and popular art of a group or a region”. This new discipline of human sciences, whose scientific dimension has often been called into question, contributed to the birth of a stereotype: that of the unchanging rural world where the peasant was the incarnation of an ideal model, honest and hard-working. Folklorists multiply their research on customs, traditions beliefs and dialects – which today are part of an intangible heritage – while at the same time acquiring a taste for the material collection of objects that are related to this heritage. Characterised also by a desire for completeness and ever-increasing rigour, there was a resurgence of interest in folklore in Europe in the 30s and 40s, against a background of nationalism and exaggerated regionalism.

Existing side by side with Folklorists, ethnology underwent its own evolution, while in the second half of the 19th century, universities and learned societies welcomed more and more ethnologists into their ranks, the discipline rapidly expanded after the Second World War. This turning point was also accompanied by a change in vocabulary: while the term “ethnography” has existed for more than a century, it is more often used to describe regional ethnography which studies the different aspects of our own society. The 1960s marked the beginning of a wave of field studies, notably under the initiative of the museologist George Henri Rivière; one of the most famous of these is undoubtedly the research conducted in Aubrac (France), a campagne of extraordinary scope whose aim was to “empirically establish the way of life in this region”.

Finally, the second part of the 20th century also saw the birth of anthropology which, in contrast with ethnology, encompasses all of humanity. The successive development of these different terms – ethnology, ethnography, anthropology – confirms an ever-widening approach to the patrimony that the museum of civilisation feeds on; the influence of American culturalism has also contributed to the compartmentalisation of the many disciplines concerned. During recent decades, new areas of research have appeared: more recent, these are made up of “micro communities” (associations, professional or religious groups, virtual worlds) which are now of interest to researchers. 

(1) DROUGUET, Noémie, Le musée de société, De l’exposition de folklore aux enjeux contemporains, Paris, Armand Colin, 2015.